My three blog posts will consist of philosophical
analyses of Breaking Bad. I will
discuss the show’s messages on: Happiness, The Legal System, and Death and
Morality. To warn the reader, there will be major spoilers in my posts. If you
wish to watch the show, I suggest that you wait to read these posts until the
show has been viewed in its entirety.
Breaking
Bad and Happiness
AMC’s hit
series, Breaking Bad, is widely
accepted as one of television’s most successful shows in history. With a total
of over 10 million viewers, one has to wonder what the show has done correctly
to obtain such a large audience. Breaking
Bad does not draw in viewers with consistent violence, obscene language, or
lackluster humor. Instead, this masterpiece of a series has managed to make
today’s public reevaluate their stances on everything from child murder to
marital unfaithfulness. It begs the questions in life we often do not want to
ponder, and it makes the viewer question the societal norms that secretly
plague our lives.
Happiness
and the pursuit of happiness are themes that Breaking Bad recognizes and then picks apart. Walter White, the
protagonist, lives a normal American lifestyle in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with
his wife, Skyler, and their son, Walter, Jr. Walter, or Walt as he is called,
is an overqualified high school chemistry teacher with a prowess for his
subject. Skyler has recently quit her job as a bookkeeper in order to care for
her unborn daughter, Holly. Walter, Jr. in a normal high school student expect
for his diagnosis of cerebral palsy. This is a family that would not be
recognized from the masses in America; there is no inherently interesting thing
about any of the family. They are meant to be portrayed in this way to provide
a medium between the viewers and the messages the show sends. The viewer is
meant to relate to these average Americans in order to allow a vicarious double
life to exist. The trials of Walt are
the trials of the working man, and Skyler provides a model for the stay-at-home
mother who would do anything for her children. Their happiness hangs in the
balance of a dead-end, middle-American family that capitalizes on the simple
pleasures of day-to-day life. So the viewer must ask his or herself: Is this
really happiness, or do the majority of people settle for a false reality of
happiness?
Walt
represents the denial of this plebian happiness. After being diagnosed with
terminal lung cancer, he begins to question the path he has taken in his life,
and more importantly, the paths he did not take. After an unknown issue with
his colleagues in the past, Walt left the company he and his two friends
founded, only to find out that years later this company has evolved into a
multi-billion dollar industry. In order to gain the monetary wealth he lost in
this endeavor, Walt compensates by slowly building his meth empire. Walt feels
that the capitalist and social systems have never allowed him to bear the fruit
of his labors, so he pursues a different, illicit path. With his life on the
clock, Walt dives head-first into the meth industry in order to leave money for
his family after he dies. As the show progresses, however, it becomes apparent
that Walt continues on this path partly out of necessity for his survival and
partly due to the rush and happiness it gives him. Walt loses sight of his
initial goal and it eventually costs him his family and his life.
We watch
Walt develop from the family man who made a drastic decision into a meth
kingpin with no regrets for his actions. The series finale finds Walt saying a
final goodbye to his wife. His family has completely alienated him and refused
the money for which he sacrificed their relationship. When asked why he
continued to cook meth, he finally gives an honest answer: “I did it for me. I
liked it. I was good at it. And I was really. . . I was alive.” After a
lifetime of underachievement, Walt sacrifices his entire life for the fleeting
happiness he felt when he cooked meth. Cooking made him feel that he was on
control of his life and later the meth business. This power gives him the rush
of success he was never able to feel by playing by the rules.
Were Walt’s
illegal actions worth the happiness he felt? Was his personal happiness
justified even though he ruined the happiness of his family? Should Walt have
settled for the average happiness he felt before his diagnosis, or did Walt
never really live until his involvement in the meth business? Breaking Bad begs these questions to the
viewer and yet provides no complete answer. It leaves each person to ponder
them and decide for themselves what the costs of happiness are and whether it
is even an honorable goal to desire.
I loved reading this! I've always noticed these philosophical subtleties in the show, but I never really sat down and thought about them. I can't want to read the other two! :D
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that the decision to have a family implied a commitment to NOT distinguishing one's personal happiness from their well-being. Walter's choices, in this light, clearly WERE bad. Remove family from the equation, then: does his personal happiness (if, for the sake of argument, we agree to call it that) override the social damage he's done? I'd still say he's broken bad, and is a broken man. In an Aristotelian sense he's clearly not even happy.
ReplyDeleteBut what do others think?
I think throughout the entire show Walt always kind of refused to take any blame or action. It always felt like to me that he always found a way out of taking the blame. It was always Jesse's fault, or Gus's fault, or somebody else's other than Walt's. I found it interesting that it wasn't until the final season that he finally owned up to things. Throughout the show he only does things halfway. He's unhappy because of all of his half measures throughout his life. It's only as Heisenberg that he really lives.
ReplyDelete